way too much trouble

August 4, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

i used to know how to delete a blog. i think.

December 31, 2003


I seem to’ve come in too late to get
a t-shirt from
IOCNM.
Check out their logo anyway.


Here’s a
report on
Birmingham’s Literary Circus.

December 30, 2003


I’ve just placed a big order with
Microcosm –
Aj Michel
having brought to my attention that this most excellent
of distros is having something of a financial crisis.
First time I’ve ever used PayPal. What are you
still doing here?

December 29, 2003


Eszter
Hargittai led off a
a
discussion of courseware in
Crooked
Timber a few weeks back.

December 28, 2003


Ladies and gentlemen:
Möbius
strip molecules
(thanks to
Sclerotic
Rings).

December 27, 2003


I’ve been ignoring all those
“what [fill in the blank] are you?”
quizzes — as
papercuts
observed, these “aren’t nearly as as fun” when you’re not “goofing off at work”.
But when
supergee
referred me to
this
presidential candidates poll and it looked pretty
interesting. They nailed my positions
pretty well, to wit:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)

2. Green Party Candidate (93%)

3. Socialist Candidate (80%)

4. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (68%)

5. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH – Democrat (59%)

6. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (59%)

7. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR – Democrat (53%)

8. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL – Democrat (53%)

9. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. – Democrat (50%)

10. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO – Democrat (49%)

11. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (41%)

12. Edwards, Senator John, NC – Democrat (40%)

13. Libertarian Candidate (39%)

14. Phillips, Howard – Constitution (30%)

15. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT – Democrat (24%)

16. Hagelin, Dr. John – Natural Law (10%)

17. Bush, President George W. – Republican (6%)

December 26, 2003


Here — with reader comments — are
“Autism
in a Needle?” and
“Eli
Lilly and Thimerosal”, by
Annette Fuentes (from
In
These Times 11/11/03).
I read these pieces when they came out
(I subscribe to the magazine) but didn’t
give ‘em much thought until I came across
two offhand comments in
Martin
Gardner‘s quasi-recent collection
Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?
(here’s its
amazon.com
page) dismissing any connection
between injections and autism.
I sort of suspect knee-jerk
trust-the-expertsism on Gardner’s part
here — even Homer nods.


From my two-hours research since then,
there seems at least to be
evidence of serious hanky-panky; see
“CDC
Study Raises Level of Suspicion” (from
Insight,
12/8/03).
Then there’s the
infamous
Eli
Lilly Rider in the Homeland Security Bill.


Moms
Against Mercury placed
this ad
today, according to their webpage.
Here are SafeMinds
and TEST
Foundation.
A yahoo
discussion group.
Oh, and a
list
of “nonprofits” and
from WHALE.
Also,
“Innoculated
into oblivion” (Salon 4/13/00).


Meanwhile, this
page
on thimerosal at the
CDC: “there is no evidence . . .”
for claims that it contributes to mental illnesses.

December 25, 2003


Androo Robinson’s
Cryptozoa
was recognized with an
independent press
award (for “general excellence — zines”) in
Utne
this month. Congratulations to the worthy winner.


It’s probably not presuming too far
to see Chris Dodge’s hand in this selection;
Utne‘s
“Street
Librarian” is in any case
among the greatest ambassadors for
zines
in the english-speaking world.

December 23, 2003


There’s
a new issue
of the best doggone Chapter Newsletter I’ve ever found –
AAUP at
the U. of Missouri, KC.

December 22, 2003


Here are some
Math
Problems for the Young and Impressionable, by
Christopher
Genovese at
Signal + Noise.


I’m quoted
here
plugging The Toucan’s First Ten.
Also at
TeachMath.net
(without the citation; it’s from my
“Some
Contradictions of Education Reform” paper).
There are
a
few (very few) links here from other blogs.


Steven Baum’s
Unusual
Literature page at
Ethel
the Blog.


A Referrer
System from Stephen’s Web.


Mathematical
LEGO Sculptures.


December 19, 2003


Planned
Obsolescence has much the
most
interesting comment on
a
thread in
Invisible
Adjunct
(next most is
Chun
the Unavoidable‘s).
The discussion’s about the annual boilerplate
“Ain’t academics whacky” coverage of the MLA conference –
curiously reminiscent of the “ZAP! POW! Comics aren’t
just for kids anymore!” stories one has seen regularly
for over thirty years now.


Holy jeewillikers! Half an hour after
writing the previous paragraph, I’ve discovered that
Jessica Crispin has
mentioned
this kind of comics coverage today (in
Bookslut)!


Also good in IA recently:
What
is a Guild? and
Who’s
Minding the Store?.


Aaron Swartz’s
NY Times
link generator. Also his redaction of
FLEEP, by
Jason Shiga.


Eric Raymond’s
Cthulhu
and Christ: commentary
on a Jack Chick takeoff by
Howard Hallis.


A
report
on blogs in
<A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"The Guardian
(hat tip: Doc Searles).
Also this
blog
review site (via
jill/txt).

December 16, 2003


As far as I know, the Women’s Ecumenical Choir is still planning
a show in
City Center Mall this Thursday (12/18).
It’ll be followed closely by a meeting of
Columbus
NION
(local branch of
Not
In Our Name).


Hmmm . . . the editor seems to be working again.


Bootstrap
Institute . . .
Borders
Employees Union. . .
the
pepys
project. . .


December 13, 2003


So this morning I was downtown at the office — it’s really nice
there between quarters when nobody’s around — and decided
to write a blog entry. But when I went to paste the URL for
a new link (to
Mark
Evanier’s blog) I got some weird message about
not enough memory; close a program & try again.
Well, I wasn’t running much of anything but did as I was told;
nope. Reboot; nope. Try another computer (on the same
network); no help here. MS Notepad has become hosed officewide.


Long story longer: I tried Word and it worked (as well as Word
can ever be said to “work”); discovered to my surprise that
it thinks it knows HTML. This could be interesting. Who knows,
maybe even useful. So I created
a
GeoCities account to to post
a draft
into. Sure enough, merely following instructions creates buggy code
(“unterminated string constant; do you wish to continue running scripts”) –
but there are possibilities here and I might end up firing AOL.


PS: I’ve put in some work on
my
comics page (that’s how I found Evanier’s stuff).

December 8, 2003


Asha Errata
has been doing
a blog
(a journal about maintaining her webpage);
I mention it now mostly because she’s also got one
called Indie
Writers (with very infrequent updates), wherein
I now find yet another event announcement:
Readable
Theatre (Dec. 13, Carson City NV).
Admittedly, it’s a poetry reading — the kind of thing I’d ordinarily drive
across town to avoid — but I read her one-act when she published it as
a zine (Ghostwriter) and liked it alright. Moreover, she’s an outstanding
citizen of
alt.zines
(the only newsgroup I read regularly).


I recently posted to
a
thread in Isomorphisms, based in its turn on
an
entry in Number 2 Pencil: stupid management tricks
in elementary algebra.

December 7, 2003


The Perpetual Motion Roadshow
is doing the west coast next week –
4 indy press performers hit 7 cities
in 8 days. Details are at
No
Media Kings.


Zine Guide
and Diatribe ( www.diatribemedia.com ; browser-crashing
scripts) are presenting an Evening of Love and Hate at
Quimby’s
(in Chicago) on the 10th,
closely followed by cartoonist
Androo
Robinson on the 13th;
the latter event is somehow associated with
SevenTen Bishop.


Also on the 13th: the
Underground
Currents zine fair at DC’s
Brian
McKenzie Infoshop.


I know most of this stuff because Jerianne
Zine
World told me.

December 6, 2003


Here’s an announcement for
The
Literary Circus (December 14 in Birmingham)
from the
ULA
fanpage (Underground Literary Alliance).
Also I finally updated
my
zines pages like I said I would: lots of new
SF stuff in particular.

December 5, 2003


I’m done with classes (but still have a few final exams next week).


Meanwhile, according to a
recent
release from the NWU
(National Writer’s Union; I’m a member),
“tens of thousands” of workers will observe
Human
Rights Day on 12/10,
with a focus on collective bargaining rights.
A link to a list of regional actions is provided.
Nothing much going on in Columbus Ohio I’m afraid.


Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio.


Berube
on “Standards of Reason in the Classroom”.

November 19, 2003


Lots of cool stuff recently at
academicgame
(though some of the internal links seem not to work — blame
Blogger™, I suppose).

November 11, 2003


There’s an
Indy
Media Expo this coming weekend in Cinci; also some
discussion of same in
Cincinnati Blog
(scroll down to Sunday 11/9). Of course I’m skipping it.

November 9, 2003


The new
Xerox
Debt (#12) is out; I should be adding new links to
my
zines pages forthwith.

November 7, 2003


This
Be The Media
conference in Madison this weekend (11/ 7–9) looks promising.
Of course I won’t be there. We’ll maybe take in a movie or something
here in Columbus.

October 30, 2003


The press conference I’ve just come home from
is described
here
(page down to “Ohio”). Two state legislators, the head of Ohio AFT,
a bunch of colleagues . . . and hardly any press.

October 23, 2003


Baby Lindy and the Drug Mothers
are opening for Screaming Urge
tomorrow night — Friday 10/24 –
at
High
Five in Columbus (High St. and 5th Ave.).
I oughta be there from about 9:00. Wheee!

October 16, 2003


Canzine
is tomorrow but we ended up not going. I’m also missing the Fall meetings of
Ohio MAA and
OhioMATYC.
What with all the writing I’m not doing and the papers I’m not grading,
all this inactivity has me just about wiped out.
The OFT is supposed to be doing some press event about
a
story I mentioned earlier right here in Columbus
to coincide with nationwide activity for
Campus Equity Week
(October 27–31).

September 24, 2003


Fall Quarter starts, for me, in a couple hours.
What better time to have found a piece called
Academia:
it is a miserable place (in
philosophy.com,
via
academicgame).

September 23, 2003


The support staff’s strike at Yale has been settled
(Yale
Daily News);
there’s some
discussion
at
Nathan Newman
(dot org).

September 22, 2003


My homie
Mike
Whybark is blogging and has
webbified Tussin Up (!)
and The Gizmos Songbook (!!)
a-and he refers to the
WQAX Project
by
Eric Sinclair
and
Anne Zender
and is just this incredible treasure-trove
of ancient Bloomington history.

September 20, 2003


I’ve updated the first of my
main
zines pages; also I found a link to said pages
saying that
“. . . the obsessive effort involved in accumulating this information
. . . boggles the mind”
(Garlic Press).

September 12, 2003


The
Labor Notes
Conference in Detroit starts today. Since I’m no longer working
as an organizer — and barely as a teacher! — I’m giving it a miss:
no money.

September 11, 2003


Ohio
House
Bill No. 249 will (if passed) amend the vile 4117.01
by deleting “Part-time faculty members of an institution of higher education”
from the list of those ineligible to petition the
State
Employment Relations Board for
collective
bargaining rights.
More info at
Gongwer
and the
Ohio
Laws pages.

September 9, 2003


There’s a short page (so far!) for
new
Quantitative Reasoning class — which started last night
and looks like a blast. The final for 148′s tonight.
I had to file several “senior” grades already
but that’s another rant.

September 1, 2003


I’ve just done a long-overdue
edit on
my
math bookmarks (removing dead links; very little new)
and selected a few of the
links
for my 148 class (whose final is in about a week).

August 30, 2003


A poor workman blames his tools:
one big reason for the infrequency
of my posts here is that my AOL
service keeps getting worse.
Presumably those who “upgrade”
get better . . . but dial-up access puts
you on some sort of pay-no-mind
list whereby you’re shoved into
a queue that somehow remembers
to load ads but keeps you
waiting eternally for
mail or newsgroups or the web.
I’ve been doing most of my browsing
– which hasn’t been much –
at work but can’t do site maintenance
other than here at home.

August 24, 2003


Making Contact discusses the
reasons
she moved to Typepad.
I’m all for it: I used to have to click
“no” about nine times (“Do You Want To Continue
Using Scripts”) just to read it
when she had Blogger.

August 21, 2003


I learned via
BenT
Steckler of this
thread
about comics blogs at
Alternative
Comics.
Also that
Harvey
Pekar (of American Splendor) is blogging.

August 17, 2003


The
new
Zine World is out. Send
Jerianne your four bucks right away.

August 14, 2003


The
Midwest
Zine Fest is this weekend in Detroit.
Then the Cut & Paste tour passes
through Bloomington
(Boxcar
Books, August 18)
and Columbus (Whetstone Park, August 19);
details are at
Microcosm
Publishing.

August 11, 2003


The Literary Saloon
celebrates
its first birthday today.
Also there’s a link to
a complaint
in Bookslut about yet another online source going subscribers-only for its reviews.
The Saloon itself commonly links to sources that require a login; yick.

August 10, 2003


Congratulations to Amanda of
Household
Opera on her successful dissertation defense.
Make that Doctor Amanda.

August 9, 2003


There’s a new
entry
about voting methods by
Henry
Farrell at
Crooked
Timber.
This has been quasi-standard material in the “math for poets”
style terminal-introductory classes I’ve more or less specialized
in at Capital and Ohio Dominican & is essential study for
concerned citizens if any sort of democratic process is
ever to be restored to our ex-republic.
Here’s a
voting
methods site
by Robert Loring of the
Center for Voting
and Democracy and the
mathematics
and elections meta-page at the
Math Forum.

August 8, 2003


Papercuts
and mediageek
published reports in their respective blogs yesterday
about last weekend’s
Portland
Zine Symposium.
Also,
The Whirligig
says the benefit in Chicago was a “huge success” and
promises more details.
King Wenclas has written
about the Chicago show in this
Atlantic
Forum page, but I expect this link to be volatile and so may remove it without notice.
Finally, the
San
Francisco Zine Fest starts tomorrow.

August 4, 2003


Jump
Cut features
a
piece about contingent faculty organizing on the net
by John Hess
in their #46 (Summer 2003).

August 2, 2003


The
benefit
for Cullen Carter is tomorrow at Chicago’s
Barrel Cafe. I was already considering not
going before wrecking my car made up my mind.
But you should go if you’ve got a chance . . .

July 30, 2003


I caused a wreck last night before work.
I seem to be on something of a losing streak.
Didn’t even get to miss class.

July 29, 2003


I wrapped up my Monday night class yesterday.
The Tuesday/Thursday continues of course.
Meanwhile, there’s all these books to schlep around.
Invisible Adjunct
has started
a
thread on unionization but don’t expect miracles:
it’ll probably be dominated by free-marketeer trolling.

July 25, 2003


Back to Bloomington tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I’ve learned that I’m losing
another office — the second
of this year. Blag.

July 23, 2003


Good heavens.
Factsheet 5
is stirring again. Says they’ll honor old subscriptions,
too.


Also there’s a new (online) issue of
workplace:
a journal of academic labor.

July 22, 2003


Bully Magazine
slams
The Believer for Tom Bissell’s hit piece
(July 2003)
on the
Underground
Literary Alliance (more links at the ULA page).
Credit where credit’s due: Bissell is far more
annoying than the ULA itself — this is not as
easy as it probably sounds.

July 21, 2003


My Bloomington trip was big fun.
The guy who threw the party and the
guy whose couch I crashed on walk to work
on IU’s fabulous campus in my
beloved hometown from houses they
own: more reasons to kick myself for
trying to play it safe and ending up here.


Considering how much time I voluntarily
spend online in any given 24 hours,
I missed it very little in the past 48.
No new links today.

July 17, 2003


Making Contact
is a mostly-academic
blog mentioning “the labor movement . . . and . . .
social justice”. OK then. I found it via
Household Opera
(via
Invisible Adjunct).
Also mentioning
a post
at Phlebas about “Blog Coveting” : it seems I’m not
the only one envious at what all these hundreds of articulate
people have accomplished.

Anyhow, I’m heading back to Making Contact right now
to post some comments. Wheee!

July 16, 2003


It seems fairly likely that I’ll start back on my meds
today after a layoff of several weeks; I have it on
good authority that I’ll be less entertaining if this
should come to pass. Too bad for my readers.
I’m unlikely to post over the weekend since I’m
heading to Bloomington to see some pals from
grad school. I’m planning to visit
Boxcar
Books (for the first time) while I’m there.
The weekend after that there’s a
high
school reunion.

July 13, 2003


Scott McCloud asks us at
scottmccloud.com to change
our bookmarks to his (groundbreaking comics)
blog. Trouble is, the new site crashes my browser
with some buggy script. So I’ve duly removed the link from my list.
Another classic case of “if it ain’t broke, break it”.

July 13, 2003


Here are a bunch of
threads
on economic issues from the
Democratic
Underground message board.
Of course I’m certainly no Democrat — voted for Nader and proud of it –
but very likely there are some discussions going on here that I’ll find interesting.
There’s even a 3D gathering planned for Columbus on August 15 if I get *real*
interested.

July 12, 2003


The
Philly
Zine Fest is tomorrow.
I won’t be there myself but the way I figure,
if I had any readers this is the kind
of thing they’d want to know.

July 10, 2003


Argh. I’m not doing the calc class
at the summer institute after all
(see the entries of July 1 & 3).
I learned today that interviews were
still going on for the position I thought
I’d been hired for. To hell with it.
Good luck getting somebody better
than me for that very demanding position
in the next four days.
Here’s
“Calling
Things By Their Names” (1998).

July 9, 2003


All knowledge is found in blogs: I was alerted to
“Word Processors:
Stupid and Inefficient” (Allin Cottrell) this morning in a thread
at the Invisible Adjunct, of all places.

July 8, 2003


I set out to write an entry just now about how ticked off I am
that Margaret Atwood denies that her recent novel
Oryx and Crake — which I’m about halfway through –
is SF ( since it “contains no intergalactic space travel,
no teleportation, no Martians”).
But then I had to spoil all my fun by checking Google.


Sure enough it’s been done to death.
This
Gallowglass piece cites
Kathryn
Cramer quoting a
fatuous
review by Sven Birkerts.
Locus online lists
several more reviews;
a link to
this
USENET thread is provided by
Apothecary’s Drawer,
along with the scolding Dame Atwood so richly deserves (May 2). Never mind then.

July 7, 2003


You can’t tell the players without a program.
This
post by Martin Stabe helpfully
catalogues some recent “mergers
and aquisitions” amongst the
scholarblahgrati.
Crooked
Timber in particular looks promising
(though it’s essentially empty so far).


Meanwhile I’ve updated my
Zine
Resources page among others.

July 6, 2003


So the
NEA
takes the “anybody but B*sh” line — a no-brainer of course.
And I found it out from some sort of quasi-blog-like entity:
Root Blog.
But I’m still looking for a plain old personal page with periodical
labor union stories. Better still: academic unions.
Is anybody out there?


PS
Court
Overturns Wal-Mart Union Ban.

July 4, 2003

My defection to the dark side
(“quicker,
easier, more seductive”)
continues:
I’ve uploaded my
review
of John Gatto’s Underground History of
American Education
before publishing the hardcopy version.

July 3, 2003

Updates. 1. I got the job.
Along with my
CLL
and CSCC gigs, this’ll make for
a pretty tight schedule.
2. There’s no contact info for the
blog I mentioned yesterday. Anonymity is one thing
but this is practically unheard-of.
I’ve started to wonder if it isn’t some
vile PR firm’s
astroturf.
I hope I’m just being paranoid.
According to the
cluetrain manifesto,
one should be able to recognize a human voice. It isn’t
always easy.

July 2, 2003

Somebody started a blog called
Math
Ed Matters! a couple weeks ago. Not surprisingly,
they appear to be pretty committed to “reform” as promulgated
by the
NCTM.


For my part, while I agree with pretty much everything MEM! says in posts like
“No
More Excuses”
and
“One
More Time, With Feeling”,
I’m generally much more in tune
with counter-reformers like
Mathematically
Correct than the NCTM.
This looks like a good time to mention my
review of
The Schools We Need
and
“Contradictions
of Education Reform”.


With any luck, there’ll be some good discussions coming up.

July 1, 2003

So I applied to teach a class in the
Summer
Institute in Science and Mathematics today after meeting the director
(Nyenty Arrey)
by accident yesterday. This “real life” thing might have some advantages.

June 30, 2003

Classes start today at Columbus State,
so I guess my summer vacation is over.
We’ll see how the blogging holds up.
Meanwhile, here’s my quasi-recent
“Why
I Teach Such Good Classes”.

June 30, 2003

A.j. Michel’s June 15 entry at
Papercuts
(the “blog*spot” linking feature for the entry itself appears to be busted)
is a report on the
Allied
Media Conference where I saw her.
She’s planning to follow up with zine reviews, so you
know I’ll be checking back often.


If I understand correctly, A.j. was one of the founders
of
Urbana-Champaign
IMC (though she’s leaving Champaign according to
her zine). Anyhow, she’s an all-around outstanding
citizen; Vlorbik sez check it out.

June 29, 2003

There’s very little on the blo’sphere
about the labor movement & unionism.
It sort of makes sense — the players are (currently)
mostly successful professionals of one sort or another.
But it’s still pretty depressing.
Even such lefty sites as
Lean Left and
Left Wing Liberal Commie Agitator and
The Lefty Directory
seem preoccupied with to-me-pretty-much-pointless issues
like the US election of 2004.
uniondemocracy.blogspot.com
rates another look.


Also, while I was searching, I found this
Top
100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s
page at
The
Mad Prophet Blog, which is pretty cool.

June 29, 2003

askpang had some
remarks
in “Relevant History” recently about the badness of cellphone service
in the USA . I’m the furthest thing in the world from an expert –
all I know is the first one I ever got doesn’t f**king work
and I’m not paying the next bill or any more after that. I told ‘em so
a couple weeks back but they still don’t know since they don’t bother
having a human being read their e-mail (the bot sent me to — another bot,
which sent back a form to fill in; no thanks).


The guilty party here is T-Mobile; the phone in question is a “Sidekick”.
There’s a web browser which works even worse — much worse — than the phone.
I’m usually not an early adopter but I’m a sucker for the web and knew I’d have
to try this thing the minute I first saw it (in NYC [where presumably service is better]
in early February).

June 28, 2003

Unf rightly
complained recently about a
piece in the Chicago Reader
for reviewing the artist’s image and not the record:
Liz Phair. Well, I got the record yesterday and have played it
once. Probably I’ll play it a whole bunch more: lots of interesting
sounds — though I think I prefer the lo-fi approach of her earlier stuff –
and her trademark touching raunchy wit.
The most amusing thing about all this for me is that the indier-than-thou
piece that Unf finds so annoying is in a rag whose very purpose is to sell
eyeballs to advertisers.

June 28, 2003

I really oughta be doing
my zine.
Or anyway reading the new
Xerox Debt.

June 27, 2003

Ever since I found about
Invisible Adjunct
(from some listserv related to
my
adjunct faculty union work)
I’ve been checking it several times daily. It’s caused me to look
at several other blogs. Looks sort of fun. What the heck.
I’ve known about librarian.net
for quite a while and it’s probably still my all-time favorite.
I swiped the HTML code from
READIN
(but cut out most of the features so don’t blame him for the
way this looks).

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.